Jordan Peele no doubt wants each of his artistic creations to stand on their own. They do. And they should. And yet. The Academy Award-winning behemoth that is Get Out will always be his benchmark. And rightfully so. That said, for his sophomore film, Us, as enjoyable as it is, is a tougher film to…
Tag: Academy Awards
Cage’s Mandy, not Manilow’s
The 2018 Panos Cosmatos film Mandy could very well have been released in 1978, directed by John Carpenter or Tobe Hooper, and, aside from Nic Cage’s Academy Award-winning visage, no one would be the wiser. Featuring a crazed cult, motorcycle-riding demons, over-saturated film stock, and, well, Nic Cage wielding a custom axe, Mandy is a…
Good Stories by the Right Type… Writer
Tom Hanks wrote a book. Yeah… that Tom Hanks. You know, the Academy Award-winner who is the closest to taking on that “everyman” actor mantle since the departure of Jimmy Stewart? And his book, Uncommon Type, is really quite fun. Uncommon Type is a collection of 17 short stories. Like any anthology, the stories presented…
The "Fake Picture" becomes a real hit
In the film Argo, producer Lester Siegel, played by Academy Award winner Alan Arkin, puts forth real effort into making a fake film a success as a perfect ruse to rescue six wanted Americans hiding at the Canadian Ambassador’s residence during the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis. The triple-threat of Ben Affleck (Argo‘s Producer-Director-Star) must have…
The Town
Let’s admit to a solemn truth here: heist flicks are as formulaic as any other genre film. One grand heist leads to another, more often than not there is at least one car chase, the alpha male falls for a woman, said male decides to leave his life of crime, which leads to his final…
Crash
In 1991, filmmaker Lawrence Kasdan created Grand Canyon, a thematic follow up to his hit The Big Chill, focusing on the lives of individuals from different classes in the great melting pot known as Los Angeles. Fourteen years later, Academy Award-winning writer Paul Haggis boosts the tempo on Kasdan’s formula with Crash. Instead of looking…
